Day Trip

After somewhat a sad month (I received some very shocking news regarding one of my old school friends, which I shan’t delve into on here as this is meant to be a happy blog), my friend and I decided that it was time for a well  overdue day trip. So, we booked train tickets, collected our 2p pieces and set off for Great Yarmouth. Neither of us had been to Great Yarmouth in a fairly long time, yet both of our previous experiences had involved masses of rain so we made sure we were wrapped up and prepared for anything the British weather could throw at us.

It was a longer journey than we had anticipated and involved two trains, although it’s debatable as to whether the second one could actually be considered a train, as it was only made up of one carriage! When we finally got there, it looked like even more of a ‘dump’ than either of us remembered, but it was just because the train station wasn’t in the best part of town. Once we had trekked towards the seafront, Great Yarmouth began to look a lot more like the Great Yarmouth we had expected!

One thing we had been looking forward to more than anything, was a game of mini-golf and after wandering up and down the promenade several times, we found a course which looked like it would be great fun. Unfortunately I didn’t win, but between us we did a rather good job! I’m always concerned about holding other players up, but we didn’t – in fact, they held us up!

On our wanders, we stumbled across a visitor centre for an off-shore wind farm, ‘Scroby Sands’. Neither of us had been aware of its existence until our little day trip, but when I found it, I was so excited! Being the geek I am, I find energy conservation fascinating. I studied Geography at A-level and therefore know quite a lot about alternative energy sourcing. Scroby Sands is a collection of 30 wind turbines which generates enough energy to power 30,000 homes. E-on has a really interesting educational website which describes different types of energy and a video which explains how it was built:

Scroby Sands

On a trip to the seaside, of course we had to have classic fish and chips! I can never finish a full piece of fish, so bought the ‘OAP and children’s’ portion, which was an absolutely perfect size and left a little space for a beach ice cream:



Odd as this may sound, I had never had chocolate sprinkles on an ice cream before and it was well worth getting!
As well as doing the usual tourist things, we also decided to hunt down our university campus (there are 5 ‘network’ learning centres spread across Suffolk…and apparently Norfolk…one of which was in Great Yarmouth). Said hunt proved somewhat more difficult than anticipated, as it is a very small building on the college campus. It’s amazing that they have so many facilities in such a small amount of space, but I suppose that goes to show what can be done if people put their minds to it!
All in all, we had a lovely day and it was great to get away from it all for a short amount of time. I do love trips to the seaside, so am looking forward to visiting my grandparents at the beach soon, too. Do any of you have any beach trips planned?